Neferata

by Josh Reynolds

  The City of Mourkain

  (–327 Imperial Reckoning)

  Neferata stalked through the hall towards the audience chamber. Naaima raced after her, fighting to keep up. ‘Neferata, wait!’ the latter cried out. ‘You mustn’t do this! It’s over!’

  Neferata stopped and spun, grabbing Naaima’s throat. ‘Understand me when I say this, Naaima, I say when it’s over! No one else,’ Neferata snarled.

  ‘Abhorash is mobilising what remains of Mourkain’s military,’ Naaima said, grabbing her mistress’s wrist. ‘He will crush Vorag’s rebels within months, if Vorag doesn’t simply flee to Cripple Peak as he seems intent on doing!’ She glared at Neferata, unafraid. ‘Ushoran knows, Neferata. He knows it was you, even if he can’t prove it.’

  ‘He knows nothing,’ Neferata said. ‘All of his attentions are on the crown.’ She released Naaima. ‘Let Abhorash waste his time on Vorag. By the time he gets back, it will be too late. I will be queen again, with powers undreamt of at my command.’

  ‘Would you fight them both?’ Naaima said. ‘Would you fight both W’soran and Ushoran and their entourages? Our forces are scattered, and of those of us here, we are too few.’

  ‘We have enough. The time to strike is now!’ Neferata said, her form quivering with impatience. ‘The web has been drawn tight. All eyes are on other sights and our fangs are at Ushoran’s throat, though he sees them not.’

  ‘Khaled, you mean,’ Naaima spat.

  ‘Ushoran trusts him,’ Neferata said.

  ‘You mean you trust him.’

  Neferata laughed. ‘Hardly, but I know him. He fears me and hungers for my touch. He will do as I command.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’

  Neferata paused. ‘Then I will kill him. We must go now, Naaima. W’soran’s ritual will begin at any moment and we must strike as soon as he has completed it.’ W’soran had been positively gleeful when he received the tome that Morath had discovered. Within a few weeks he seemed to have discovered what he needed to bind Alcadizzar’s spirit, and tonight, with the Witch-Moon high in the air, was the night he had chosen to do the deed.

  ‘And what then?’ Naaima pressed.

  Neferata looked at her in frustration. ‘What do you mean what then? Then we will have a kingdom to rule, and an empire to build.’

  ‘Remember what Abhorash said to you on our first day in Mourkain?’ Naaima said desperately. ‘Remember what he said about the difference between taking something and holding on to it?’

  ‘With the crown–’

  ‘You’ve seen what the crown has done to Ushoran. Look at yourself! All of our plans, tossed over for impulse,’ Naaima said, grabbing Neferata’s arms. ‘You endanger all of us, and for what – something that you neither need nor truly want?’

  Neferata pulled her arms free of her handmaiden’s grip and slapped her. Naaima fell, eyes wide. ‘Who are you to say what I need? Who are you to question me?’ Neferata hissed, looming over the fallen vampire. ‘I will–’

  Kill her. She is of no further use to us. Kill her for questioning you.

  The voice was like a shiver of ice-water down her back. The voice – the damned voice! It had all begun to go wrong when she had first heard its whisper so many years before. And every decade, it grew louder and more insistent, like a maggot burrowing into her very brain. Its whispers had become demanding screams since her return from Nagashizzar, and now she could barely focus on anything else. ‘I will… I will forgive you, this time,’ she said, forcing herself to calm down. She stepped back, vision blurring as if her head were surrounded by a halo of flies.

  It had all gone wrong in her absence, despite Naaima’s best intentions. Someone had told Vorag that Ushoran had decided to rid himself of his more barbarous servants in an effort to quell the unrest that swept Mourkain and Strigos. Creatures like Zandor and Gashnag had turned on their fellows. Several of the frontier ajals had seen their holdings burned or taken, and those who did not flee were impaled in the ashes of their lairs. Vorag had made his move, fearing he would have no other time. Stregga had gone with him. Sometimes Neferata cursed the initiative of her followers.

  Now Strigoi fought Strigoi in the east and the wildling tribes had seized their opportunity. Savage hillmen attacked the outposts of Strigos and what forces had not been mobilised to fight Vorag now waged war on their former allies.

  ‘We should leave. Tonight,’ Naaima said, rising warily to her feet. ‘We’ll seek sanctuary with the Draesca. Or we could find Vorag. We could even go north, or west. Leave these mountains forever.’

  ‘I’m tired of running,’ Neferata said, not looking at her handmaiden. She clenched her hands and her claws extended like a cat’s. ‘I am tired of going poor into the night. It is the same game, over and over again, Naaima.’ She growled. ‘I want a new game.’ She looked at her servant, the only being she could still, perhaps, call friend. ‘Would you leave me again?’

  ‘No,’ Naaima said, after a moment of hesitation. ‘No, for better or worse, our fates are bound together.’

  ‘I’ve told you, there is no fate,’ Neferata said.

  ‘Prove it,’ Naaima retorted. ‘Let us leave.’

  Neferata opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. She closed her mouth and turned, stalking towards the throne room of the black pyramid. After what seemed like an eternity, she heard Naaima begin to follow her.

  The others were waiting for them in the audience chamber. Layla and Rasha and Anmar stood to the side, across from Ushoran’s honour guard, who were at last allowed into the pyramid with their master. And in a half-circle before the open aperture that led down to Alcadizzar’s tomb stood W’soran and his disciples, including Morath.

  No others were in attendance, not even Ushoran’s inner circle. Likely they were too busy trying to decide who to back in the civil war now brewing. Neferata’s agents had made sure that it wouldn’t be an easy choice. Most would sit on the fence until one side or the other looked to be victorious, and then they would make their move to curry favour.

  It was all perfect. Ushoran, alone, save for a few guards, with her knife at his throat. W’soran would stay out of it. The old beast despised them both equally, and he had flee the first chance he got, if Morath was to be believed. No matter, she could always find him again, if she needed him.

  ‘Ah, now the circle is complete,’ Ushoran said as he spotted her. He smiled thinly at her. ‘I trust I did not call you away from anything important?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ Neferata said. ‘I am honoured that you invited me to – what is this? – your coronation? And with so few in attendance…’

  ‘Jealousy ill becomes you,’ Ushoran said.

  ‘And condescension, you,’ Neferata said. ‘Vorag marches east. He has supporters there, on the frontier.’

  ‘And Abhorash marches in pursuit?’

  ‘As you requested,’ Neferata said. ‘It wouldn’t do to have him here. Not for this.’

  Ushoran made a face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You did well.’

  ‘Your gratitude fills me with joy,’ Neferata said.

  Ushoran snorted as he watched W’soran and his disciples prepare themselves for the rite. ‘I doubt that. Still, let it never be said that I cannot acknowledge the wit and worth of another.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never said that,’ Neferata murmured. ‘The war with the tribes goes badly, my spies tell me.’

  Ushoran grunted. ‘We are too few. But not for long.’

  ‘And what if Vorag defeats Abhorash? This civil war may become a less than foregone conclusion,’ Neferata said, not looking at him. ‘There are too many nobles straddling both sides. They will turn on us, Ushoran.’

  ‘Are you trying to upset me?’ Ushoran hissed. He glared at her. ‘Or are you simply so spiteful that you would seek to cast a shadow over this moment?’

  ‘Neither,�
� Neferata said, meeting his glare calmly. ‘I am merely doing what you have tasked me with. I am informing you of the threats which besiege this straw empire you have built.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ushoran’s expression turned cunning. He gestured sharply. Khaled stepped forwards, carrying something wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. With a start, Neferata realised that it was a cloak. A dwarf cloak.

  Ushoran was watching her face. ‘If you were so intent on informing me of threats to my rule, I cannot help but wonder why you neglected to mention that our stunted neighbours have been scurrying about in our pantry.’

  Khaled pulled back the edge of the cloak, revealing a bloodstained axe; Razek’s axe, she realised in shock. Khaled did not meet Neferata’s eyes as she glared at him. ‘I did not want to worry you,’ she said. ‘I trust that you dealt with the trespassers?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ushoran said grinning. He traced the scrolling rune-work on the blade of the axe, wincing slightly. Neferata had never noticed before, but the runes were worked into the steel in threads of silver. ‘I dealt with them myself. I have not hunted in some time. Sometimes I wonder whether my current laws regarding such are as wise as I am assured that they are.’

  ‘We shall have to come up with some sort of explanation for the dawi,’ Neferata said, momentarily nonplussed. Razek was dead. Some part of her felt as if she had been cheated. She looked at Ushoran. ‘If they are aware of what he was–’

  ‘Then you will deal with it,’ Ushoran said, still watching her. ‘Won’t you?’

  Neferata paused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘W’soran has said that the dawi work just as diligently and as well dead as they do alive. I think he exaggerates, but, well… he is the expert.’ Ushoran’s lips peeled back from the nest of fangs that inhabited his mouth. ‘Imagine it, my lady. The Silver Pinnacle, working day and night in the darkness, crafting arms and armour for the glory of Strigos and all for the price of a bit of blood.’ He snapped his fingers in front of her face. ‘We will be as invincible in war as we are in matters of life and death.’ He tapped the axe again. ‘And this will be our last payment to our allies, I think. After all, what need have the dead of gold?’

  As plans went, Neferata could see the efficiency of it. It was also mad. And Ushoran was mad for suggesting it. She could see an unhinged hunger in his eyes. He had always been a slave to his hungers, even as they all were.

  The forges of the dawi of the Silver Pinnacle will ring in the darkness unto eternity and the dead will sheathe their bones in iron and march against sunrise and sunset alike, the voice purred. It showed her the dead, crawling across the earth like black ants, sheathed in metal, burying everything under their iron limbs, and she was reminded of scarab beetles crawling across a corpse and stripping it of all flesh. The world would be a gleaming, silent tomb.

  She shook her head and Ushoran cocked his, looking at her curiously. ‘You disagree?’

  ‘I... no, no, it is a good plan,’ she said, forcing the words out. ‘I look forward to it.’

  ‘Do you? I wonder,’ Ushoran said, turning back to the ceremony. ‘Now shush. History’s epilogue begins now.’

  Stung, Neferata stepped back and joined her handmaidens. Naaima laid a hand on her arm and Neferata shook her off. Naaima looked afraid; it was the first time that Neferata had seen fear in her handmaiden’s face since before Lahmia fell. Layla was trembling like a child or a frightened animal, her eyes red and wide. Rasha was less obviously affected, but there were signs of strain on her face and in the rigidity of her muscles. It was no longer just her. Something was stirring in the dark, and even lesser creatures could sense it. Her senses were screaming in terror. The throne room seemed to contract. Someone was sitting on the throne. For a moment, the shape was lean and immense, a rickety giant clad in armour such as she had never seen, with a crown on its skeletal brow and eyes of green balefire that burned her clear through.

  She shook her head and the vision passed. She looked at Anmar. ‘What is your fool brother playing at? I told him that Ushoran was to know nothing of the dwarfs until I decided to tell him!’

  ‘My lady, I–’

  ‘Don’t try and protect him, girl,’ Neferata said, grabbing Anmar’s arm. ‘What is he up to?’

  Before Anmar could answer, W’soran and his followers began to speak, one after the other, their voices blending in dark harmony. The light of the braziers scattered about flickered and then blazed all the brighter, turning from a clean pale glow to something sickly and weird as the words echoed from the oddly vaulted reaches of the chamber.

  Neferata stiffened as something reached out of the darkness of the tomb-corridor and caressed her. The chamber seemed to tremble with titan footsteps and the rock groaned and shifted. Smoke issued from the cracks in the walls and the floor and she could feel a heat pressing down on her from every direction, just as before.

  Alcadizzar was coming.

  W’soran spat something, and he flung out one gnarled limb. A weft of crackling onyx lightning stretched from his hand, splashing across the aperture. His disciples threw back their heads as W’soran pulled more power from them. Neferata blinked as she caught sight of what might have been obsidian webs spreading between the necromancer’s acolytes and binding them all together. Her blood began to race as she sensed something coming. She looked around, seeing the same intent expression on the face of every vampire in the chamber – a feral lust that stripped from them even the most basic shred of human dignity and instead replaced it with the bald greed of a starving animal.

  When the light came, it was painful. A curling wing of flame lashed out of the aperture, spattering across the line of necromancers, and one screamed, high and piteous, as his ragged robes caught fire. He tumbled from the line, thrashing and beating at himself with stick arms and wispy fingers. The flames simply consumed him all the faster for his attempts to put them out. He crawled across the floor, leaving a greasy trail in his wake, his flesh blistering from his bones.

  ‘He comes!’ Morath screamed suddenly. Neferata saw the Strigoi stagger, their hands clapping to their ears. A moment later she understood why. The voice screamed, rattling her brains inside her head. It was not the voice of the crown, not the thin whisper of Nagash’s shadow, but the full-throated howl of the Prince of Rasetra and the last true King of Khemri as he was dragged from his tomb by W’soran’s magics. There was nothing of her gentle prince in the mad, billowing shape which lurched from the aperture, its limbs ballooning and thinning like the smoke of a raging fire. It roared and its face became an elephantine skull as it squeezed itself into the chamber.

  ‘Bind him, damn you!’ Ushoran roared, fighting to be heard over the tumult. ‘Bind his damned soul, W’soran! Do it now!’

  W’soran did not reply. His dark parchment-like flesh had gone utterly pale from the strain of the great wreaking which he was attempting. The spirit swept one of Ushoran’s warriors up and the vampire flailed like a leaf caught in an updraft. It was crushed against the ceiling of the chamber, reduced to a wreck of bloody meat and crushed armour. Alcadizzar turned, empty eyes seeking more prey. Neferata froze as his eyes lit on her. Her handmaidens dived aside as the spirit swept towards them, but she could not move. She heard them crying out, but she could not answer.

  Alcadizzar stopped, his ethereal features inches from hers, his blank eyes staring into her dark ones. She felt the heat of him, and knew that he could burn her form to a cinder, should he so choose. In life, Alcadizzar had been magnificent. In death, he had become something so monstrous that she felt fear for the first time in centuries.

  But he did not burn her, or dash her to the stones. Instead he hesitated, his face becoming malformed as it rippled with long-forgotten expression. Again she saw times past, spreading out around them like the wings of some great bird, a kaleidoscope of thought and emotion and lost moments. Of a child whom she had weaned on immortality, of a boy whom she had trained
, of a man whom she had come to – what? Had it been love? Or simply desire writ large?

  ‘I wanted…’ she croaked, reaching up as if to stroke his cheek. ‘I wanted things to be different.’

  She saw his end. She felt the tremor of the hissing, smoking blade in his hands as it sheared through Nagash’s upraised hand, and felt the foul heat of that same sword as it ate into him, burning his hands raw and black. She saw him stumble through the mountains, naked and broken, his shard-thoughts so sharp that they cut his soul to ribbons even as his body at last began to fail. She saw him clutch Nagash’s crown tight to his chest as he sank to his knees in the freezing waters of the river, a living, screaming mummy, his flesh burned tight to bones made strong by the elixirs she had fed him as an infant.

  She heard the crown scream as he carried it into the darkness, and how it ripped his soul free of his body, trying to force him to let go. She felt Kadon bind that monstrous soul-thing back into its shell, nearly killing himself in the process. And she saw him release those bindings even as red-eyed death closed in on him. And she knew, then, just what it was W’soran was trying to do and something she thought was sadness flooded her. ‘Oh, if you had just given in to fate,’ she murmured.

  And what of you, Neferata, Alcadizzar whispered, would you give in?

  Struck, she gaped at the spirit as it suddenly convulsed. Beyond it, visible through its cloudy shape, something horrible swayed in the aperture. It had clawed its way out of the deep places, invigorated by W’soran’s magics. Alcadizzar’s body, hungry for the return of its soul, was still a mighty thing, even shrunken by death. Withered muscles pulsed beneath cracked and dried flesh as it took a faltering step.

  ‘No,’ she hissed. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’ Ushoran howled.

  Alcadizzar howled as well, as his spirit was dragged into his corpse. Many of W’soran’s acolytes were on their hands and knees, vomiting black blood as their master strained against the dead king’s strength. With a shriek, W’soran thrust his arms out, and Alcadizzar’s essence splashed against his corpse, seeping into it like an implosion. The thing rocked on its heels and its arms slowly spread, dropping the thing it held.